The Living Wallet Will Force You To Save By Literally Running Away From You

For once, it isn't your fault if you lost your wallet. A new innovation, unsurprisingly from Japan, called Living Wallet may be the future of responsible saving.

If users get a little reckless over the course of a month, the wallet won't let them get away with it. It can't starve, after all! The wallet is connected to a bookkeeping app called Zaim so if a user's checking account drops below a certain amount, the wallet becomes sentient (sort of).

At first, it will run away from the user's hand using little wheels and a sensor. If that's not enough to stop the reckless spender and the wallet gets caught, it will start screaming for help through a built-in speaker.

As a last resort (and let's hope we all have enough self-control to never get to this point) the wallet will send a message to your phone that forces it to call your mother. No one wants to get to that point. This shaming tool may just work. It was even nominated for a Yahoo! Japan Internet Creative Award.

Whether it's the Shame Alarm that sends embarrassing Tweets from your account if you won't wake up in the morning ("I'm lazy and won't stop dreaming about Betty Boop doing lewd stuff"), or an app called StickK that requires credit card information. Say you're trying to quit smoking, StickK functions so that every time you buy a pack the app will make a donation to a cancer research charity.

Yes, these apps can be a little much, but sometimes humans need negative reinforcing stimuli to actually enforce change. So if you've been going on a spending spree, then maybe an artificially intelligent wallet is your best bet. Don't let it run too far, though, these babies aren't programmed to find their way back to your pocket.